Target: Houston

Air raid sirens blared throughout downtown. An “attack” on Houston was imminent.

At that moment, residents were directed to stop what they were doing and leave the area.

As the above headlines indicate, the 30-minute Civil Defense drill — dubbed “Operation Alert” and conducted in various cities across the nation — tested Houston’s response to a nuclear attack. It wasn’t a complete surprise to most Houstonians. Residents back then didn’t have to wait for a siren to tell them to leave downtown.

“Five minutes after the drill started, there were few moving vehicles on downtown streets other than city buses and police cars,” Houston Post reporter Brian Spinks observed. “The homeward rush started as early as 4:30 p.m.”

“The alert was observed in comfort by several oldsters in San Felipe Courts,” the Houston Chronicle reported. “They relaxed in lawn chairs, sipping cokes and watched the traffic cleared from the area.”

To add a sense of realism to the drill, fighters from Foster Air Force Base in Victoria streaked across the skies above downtown. A B-36 bomber also flew high above the city. Three C-46s representing enemy bombers also took part in the exercise.

Helicopters from Ellington Air Force Base hovered over the city carrying observers and cameramen. Another plane also flew overhead, blaring instructions to the public.

“As the ‘attack’ and ‘defense’ planes swooped over, many of the people paused to watch. If and when Houston is hit by an H-bomb, a lot of people are going to die with their mouths open,” said Post reporter George Jackson.

Mayor Roy Hofheinz, Civil Defense Director Bob Smith and County Judge Bob Casey watched the evacuation from the canopy of the Rice Hotel at Main.

According to the Post, Hofheinz said the evacuation was “extremely successful” and surpassed his expectations.

The drill was actually part of a larger, daylong effort to measure the city’s preparedness.

Here’s how the Post described it:

A theoretical evacuation of the city carried out earlier Wednesday supposedly saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Houstonians

In the paper exercise, part of a nationwide drill, the downtown area of Houston was “wiped out” by an imaginary bomb, which, theoretically, was dropped at Capitol Avenue and Austin Street at 1:45 p.m.

Nearly four hours’ warning and the evacuation of a half million residents kept total casualties down to 45,000 dead and 76,000 injured in the simulated enemy attack. Civil Defense officials estimated that the number of dead would rise to 66,660 in 48 hours, but the total number of casualties was only about 122,000.

If there had been no evacuation, the officials said, 219,000 people would have been killed and 170,000 injured.

Radiological fallout posed a special problem for the Houston Civil Defense organization. The mock bomb, 50 times as powerful as the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima and equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT, was “exploded” at ground level.

Not taking that day’s events too lightly, the June 15, 1955, edition of the Chronicle weighed in on the importance of the drill.

“This is a trial run. The next time the sirens scream, it may be the real thing.”

Pete Vazquez : Post file

A desolate Main at Pease during drill, June 15, 1955. Note Weather Eye atop building.

Personal photo

Turning this into sort of a Now & Then post, here’s the intersection today.